One of the most famous lines in Avalanche history, when Patrick Roy said “I can’t really hear what Jeremy says, because I got my two Stanley Cup rings plugged in my ears” to Jeremy Roenick of Chicago in the 1996 Western Conference semifinals, got an addition Thursday.

Roenick was at the Avs practice facility this morning, doing a segment on Matt Duchene for NBC. We asked Roy, who got two more rings after that series, if he could hear anything Roenick said to him during the visit.
“I had the other two rings in my mouth, I couldn’t say anything to him,” Roy said.

Hey. Welcome to my house. And welcome to the blog where a guy in his 40s watches a VHS tape and writes about it. (Come back everyone!).

Moving along. We watch an old Avs game together here, with the disclosure: I’ve never seen this game on TV before, because I probably covered it live in person. Then again, maybe not, but we’ll find out at the end when I look through the digital archives of the Denver Post and reproduce the next-day story, for what it said then and to compare/contrast what I say about it now.

I’ve done a few of these, so many know the drill. I was given a large cache old VHS tapes by a kindly former Avs employee, hundreds of games, and I am going back to watch them now and make comments about the viewing experience all these years later, and maybe tell some stories and crack some unfunny snark.

Tonight’s game: A Nov. 29, 2000 tilt between your Avs and the Phoenix Coyotes. It was delivered to us via a Fox Sports Net feed, and before the game there was some “highlight of the day” material on the local sports world, which I just watched and included:

Count me as one of the many in the hockey world who was shocked – shocked! – at Jeremy Roenick’s incredible verbal fusillades last night on the Versus TV set toward San Jose Sharks veteran Patrick Marleau.

After the Sharks collapsed in the third period and lost 4-3 to the Red Wings in a potential closeout game, Roenick singled out Marleau by saying it was a “gutless, gutless performance” and later pointed to his heart to show where Marleau was “hurt.”

Honestly, I had to rewind it a couple of times to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. Wow. You think there’s some untold history between the two players? They spent two years together in San Jose, after all.

I’m not a media critic, so I’m not going to get into the business of evaluating Roenick. But obviously those were some really strong words, and if the Sharks still manage to advance to the next round and beyond, it could be a little, you know, awkward should Roenick and Marleau meet in an elevator anywhere during the series.

It’s getting ugly between the Sharks and Roenick. San Jose’s longtime play-by-play TV man, Randy Hahn, accused Roenick of only wanting to further his broadcast career and was “WAY over the line.” Others have criticized Roenick too, including outspoken player agent Allan Walsh, who put out a tweet saying, “When I hear the name Jeremy Roenick, I think of him stabbing his union + fellow players in the back during the 2004-05 lockout.”

Here’s the video of Roenick’s broadsides:

– What’s going on at the World Championships? No, I’m the one doing the asking here. Sorry, but I can’t think of anything I care about less right now than a hockey tournament played right after a regular season that isn’t called the Stanley Cup playoffs. Couldn’t care less about a contrived “world championship” tournament where many of the very best players in the world aren’t competing – they’re in the Cup playoffs instead – or who join the tournament halfway through.

– My picks for the Cup Finals were Vancouver-Boston, and I’ll stick with ‘em. But if Detroit comes all the way back against the Sharks, I can’t see anyone beating them after that. Right now, an awful lot of people in the hockey world think the Sharks will choke this thing.

– It looks very much like the Phoenix Coyotes will get at least one more year in Glendale, thanks to some NHL maneuvering. That likely means, of course, that the Avalanche will stay put in the Northwest Division at least another year.

Terry Frei graduated from Wheat Ridge High School in the Denver area and has degrees in history and journalism from the University of Colorado-Boulder. He worked for the Rocky Mountain News while attending CU and joined the Post staff after graduation. He has also worked at the Oregonian in Portland, Ore., and The Sporting News. His seventh book, March 1939: Before the Madness, was issued in February 2014.

Chambers covers college and professional hockey for The Denver Post. He has written for the Post since 1994, after dumping his first 9-to-5 office job a couple years out of college. He primarily follows the University of Denver hockey team and helps cover the Avalanche.